3/21/14

Friday Feline 2

This is Chenille's profile.

She's been in the family a long time, 12 years. In 2002 we went to the local shelter to see if there was a cat we could add to the family. Chenille was just 3 weeks old. She and her 2 brothers had been abandoned in a box on the doorstep of the shelter when it was closed. They weren't even on solid food yet. The heartlessness of some humans is appalling.

The shelter doesn't usually adopt out kittens that young. They care for them until they are 8 weeks old and weaned, but I assured them we'd do right by her. So they decided to trust us. I took her to our vet immediately. He gave us advice on how best to feed her and our adventure began. She had to be fed every 2 hours, including in the middle of the night, just like a real human baby does. My daughter Sarah took on the responsibility. She did a very good job, and learned a lot from the experience. Fortunately, kittens grow and develop quickly so the lesson lasted just a few weeks.

Chenille is MY cat. Or rather, she considers me HER human. She's a tiny little thing. Being taken from her mother too early stunted her growth. But she's my sweetie. She spends inordinate amounts of time snoozing in my lap when I'm knitting, or computing. She talks to me a lot too. I don't understand a meow she says, but I pretend to. This makes her happy.

We have a morning routine. When she thinks I should be getting up (based on her need to see me again, usually), she starts loudly meowing outside my bedroom door. Eventually I get up cuz she's very LOUD and insistent. I open the door. If the water dish is empty, she tells me about it and trots over to the dish to point it out. If not, then she is just happy to see me.

She usually wants me to pick her up, carry her over to the living room window so she can look out for a minute, then she wants down. After that she waits, impatiently I might add, for me to feed the dog, make coffee, and do whatever else needs done before I sit down and boot my laptop. As soon as I sit down she's in my lap. This can be a good thing or a bad thing.

If she's feeling good, then it's a good thing. She settles down, purrs, and eventually dozes off. Occasionally, not as much as she did when she was young, she'll settle in for a session of toe sucking while I stroke her back. Like thumb sucking, but one of her front toes. She is most comforted by this behavior. Most of the time, though, she's in a bad mood. She doesn't feel well most days. She has a bit of arthritis in her back and she's getting old which makes her grumpy. Then it's getting in my lap, begging me to scritch her head, getting mad at me for scritching her head, yowling and jumping off in a huff, then returning 5 minutes later to 'reluctantly' settle down and go to sleep. She can be quite the drama queen.

Because I'm hers, she doesn't scratch me like she does the rest of the family when annoyed. She bats me with her claws in. Everyone else gets ripped open. Sometimes she'll be so cranky she bites. She doesn't bite me hard enough to hurt me, but she draws blood on everyone else.